Fallon Fox was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1975, and even as a child she sensed a truth inside that didn’t match the body others saw. Growing up, she thought she might be gay, since liking “girl things” was labeled that way, but her longing ran deeper. At nineteen she married her high-school love, became a father, and quietly carried the weight of an identity she could not yet claim. Service in the U.S. Navy taught her resilience, but the discipline of military life could not silence her need for authenticity. After her discharge and a short time at the University of Toledo, she turned to long-haul trucking, saving every paycheck for the day she could live openly. In 2006, in Bangkok, Thailand, Fallon underwent feminizing surgery and breast augmentation, finally stepping into herself. Returning to Illinois, she trained in mixed martial arts at the Midwest Training Center.
She called herself the Queen of Swords, earning the name with three knockouts and two submissions—proof that strength and femininity could exist side by side. In March 2013, Fallon came out publicly through Outsports and Sports Illustrated, becoming the first openly transgender athlete in professional MMA. Her announcement ignited debate: some praised her courage, others questioned fairness. The discussion intensified after fighter Tamikka Brents sustained an injury in 2014. Fallon faced the controversy head-on, advocating for policies based on science and fairness, and encouraging research into how hormone therapy affects strength, bone density, and endurance. Beyond her record in the cage, her legacy became one of visibility and advocacy, helping to move the conversation from fear and resistance toward understanding and inclusion in the world of sports.
Monika: Hello Fallon! Thank you for accepting my invitation. Welcome to my blog!
Fallon: Hello Monika. Thanks for having this interview with me.
Monika: I absolutely love the color of your hair! What inspired you to choose this particular shade?
Fallon: Around the time after I quit competing in MMA, I started really getting into the color pink, and I had always wanted to dye my hair when I was a fighter but felt I couldn’t because it might make my hair too brittle. MMA fighters spend a lot of time on the mats where hair can get caught underneath bodies and pulled, so I was worried about that. Anyway, after I finished with my fighting career, I wanted a new style, and now I fluctuate between a kind of pastel goth and metal style, which incorporates my pink hair well.
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| "MMA was my life for a good while." |
Monika: I looked up your name, Fallon. It’s of Irish origin, from the Gaelic Ó Fallamhain, meaning “descendant of Fallamhan,” which signifies a leader or someone of high standing. Do you feel that this meaning resonates with who you are and how you see yourself?
Fallon: Yeah, when I was picking out a name for myself, I looked up the name Fallon online. At the time, almost 25 years ago, online sources said the name was Gaelic and meant “the girl who is in charge,” which is like what you described as someone of high standing. Also, my dead name was Gaelic, so I just decided to keep the theme.
Monika: Fallon is a beautifully gender-neutral name, used for both boys and girls. Did you receive it at birth, or did you choose it later as part of your transition journey?
Fallon: I chose the name later as part of my transition journey. I actually named myself after Fallon Bowman, who was the bass player for the band Kittie back in the late 90s and early 2000s. She was a woman of color who I always thought was the coolest character, and I wanted to look as good as her and live a similar type of life.
Monika: You retired from fighting a decade ago, yet the media still strongly associate you with MMA. How do you feel about that label? Do you ever wish to shift public perception, perhaps by exploring fashion modeling or another avenue that highlights a different side of you?
Fallon: I feel comfortable with that label. After all, MMA was my life for a good while. Almost nine years I dedicated to the sport. It’s always going to be a part of me, and I’m comfortable with that. I even cherish it, even if I can’t participate in it anymore. As for exploring fashion or modeling, I had an experience a few years ago where I walked the runway in NYC Fashion Week, which was pretty fun. I don’t think I would attempt to make a career out of modeling, though, because I’m almost 50 years old right now. I’ll leave the modeling for the youngsters.
Monika: Forgive my honesty, but I’ve never really been drawn to fighting sports, and I often wonder what draws women to compete in something so physically intense, and at times even bloody. Instead of asking about your victories, I’d like to ask about the toll: what physical price have you paid along the way, and looking back, do you feel it was worth it?
Fallon: The women in fighting sports are drawn to it for similar reasons as the men, for the most part. I was interested in the sport of mixed martial arts since the 90s, when the first Ultimate Fighting Championship came out. Back then it was all about which fighting style could be proven to be the best. At the time, I was a high school wrestler, so I was a grappler. And most of the folks doing well in the early UFCs were grapplers, which was up my alley. After high school, I didn’t train in wrestling or any other combat sport until 2006.
But I’ll add that around that time, I had just transitioned and was feeling unsafe sometimes when walking outside at night or in a bad area because I was outwardly presenting as a woman. Nobody in public knew I was also a trans woman unless I told them. But just being a woman puts you in a position where you may feel the need for safety. The opportunity came around where I was invited by a physical trainer at a gym I was working out at to come join an MMA gym, and everything snowballed from there.
Monika: When you came out, did your mother embrace you as her daughter? And do you feel any connection to her in the way you look, carry yourself, or even in your style and mannerisms?
Fallon: Oh, hell no, my mother did not embrace me as her daughter. I was born into a right-wing evangelical Christian family. As a matter of fact, when I first came out to my parents at the age of 26 and told them I wanted to transition, they suggested that I go to conversion therapy (although conversion therapy was not what they called it). I ended up going to conversion therapy to try and make everyone else in the world around me happy, including my mother. I’m lucky to still be standing here, because it made me suicidal.
So, no, there was no embracing me as a woman then, and still to this day by my mother. I saw her this summer at a family reunion, and she deadnamed me and misgendered me some 25 years after I came out to her. I do see a lot of resemblance in the way my mother and I look physically, however. And sometimes my accent is similar to hers, or the way I speak. Our mannerisms are different, though, I would say.
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| "My mother did not embrace me as her daughter." |
Monika: Do you remember the first time you met a transgender woman in person? What was that experience like, and how did it make you feel?
Fallon: The first time I saw a transgender woman was at my older sister’s high school graduation. There was a Black trans woman who had graduated from her school the year before she did, who knew my sister. The reason I knew she was trans was because my mother had seen this person pre-transition and was remarking on how disgusted she felt that this trans woman was at a high school graduation around other youths. At the time, the experience made me feel sad for the trans girl my mom was hating on, because I could tell that she could feel my mother’s hateful gaze. And it made me fearful of ever being in the same position she was.
Monika: I finally felt free after my transition. How about you? Was there a single moment, or maybe a series of moments, where you truly felt like you had stepped into your most authentic self?
Fallon: I think for me it was more like a series of moments spread out over a short span of time. Feeling like I stepped into my most authentic self happened after I started training for MMA at an MMA gym. I used to be self-conscious and wear either a wig or hair extensions, even though I likely really didn’t need them, because I felt self-conscious most of the time. But you can’t wear those things when training for MMA. And I was sometimes worried about whether anyone could tell if I was trans or not, which weighed heavily on me. After a while training, being skin-close every day to other people, with lots of people’s hands physically touching me while doing martial arts, and none of them saying anything at all about me being trans, I started to feel extremely comfortable with myself.
Monika: Did the acceptance you found in the MMA gym help ease your gender dysphoria?
Fallon: You know, passing isn’t everything, they say. But it sure can help your psyche if you can achieve it. After months of training in an MMA gym and everyone accepting me for being a woman, it did something to me. There was no more gender dysphoria. It just all went away. I just kind of felt like my womanhood was solidified both inside and out. I haven’t felt gender dysphoria since, except for maybe a few times when in the MMA cage where people in the audience were screaming horrible stuff about my body that did not exist, like, “You look like a man,” because I had come out already, so they knew I was trans and they wanted to mess with me. So that kind of took me back in time within my head to a point where I didn’t look like I do now and caused dysphoria.
It’s not all about passing and looking good, though. Before I did MMA, I think I felt like I almost had to overdo the femininity to fit in as a woman. But I saw other women that I trained with in the gym who didn’t present this way, and they became my role models. Presenting like them started to feel more natural, and hanging out with them while doing so made things feel like it fit — more like my authentic self.
Monika: Many transgender women have a variety of experiences with hormone therapy. Looking back, how do you feel about the physical and emotional effects it’s had on you?
Fallon: I don’t know. I’ve been on hormones so long it’s hard for me to reach back and remember totally what it was like before them emotionally. But I think I can say, from what I remember, that I’m probably a tad bit more emotional than before I started taking them. As for the physical effects, that was a major change. My body is radically different than it was before.
I mentioned something earlier about the feeling of having to overdo my femininity earlier in my transition. Hormones helped a lot, because I was a pretty in-shape person pre-estrogen and my muscles were tight. Estrogen seemed to make my arms more lithe because they became weaker, so the movements I made with them felt more graceful than before. Things like that had a major effect on me.
Monika: The journey to being our true selves often comes with a heavy price, losing friends, family, and sometimes even our jobs. What was the hardest part of coming out for you, and how did you navigate it?
Fallon: I’d say initially one of the hardest parts was losing lots of friends because they felt the relationship dynamics would change too much, given I was transitioning and going to express myself as a woman. I had lots of close friends that I was in the military with, and I only have a few now. I navigate that with the number of friends I now have who have taken their place. Another would be how my family treated me when I came out. That situation still exists today, although it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to because I’ve pretty much cut most of them out of my life.
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| With Laverne Cox. |
Monika: Many of us feel the pressure to “pass” as women, and even after surgeries, society keeps judging us. How do you personally deal with the outside world’s expectations?
Fallon: I’m honestly not so sure how to answer that question. On a day-to-day basis, when I walk around in the world, I don’t have to deal with the outside world’s expectations of not fitting in, because I do. I’m pretty much on the binary, and everyone thinks I’m cisgender unless I tell them. I don’t feel pressure to “pass” because I already do. I realize that some trans women feel the pressure to pass even after surgeries, but honestly, that’s not me. Even when haters who know I’m trans from the media say that I don’t pass to try and hurt my feelings, I feel no pressure to pass because I know they are full of crap.
Monika: What are your thoughts on the current situation for transgender women in your country?
Fallon: I feel like my sister transgender women in this country are in a pretty bad spot right now. There is legislation happening which hurts trans girls, and I can see that the political right wants to spread that to the adult trans women. I don’t believe there will even be adult trans women competing in sports in the years to come. The situation is dire here for us.
Monika: I remember the time right after my transition, it was pure euphoria. My closet is still full of dresses and shoes that I literally bought by the dozens back then, and I must have tried on hundreds. I felt like I had to make up for all those years that were taken from me. Did you feel the same way?
Fallon: Sure, I felt the same way, especially earlier on in my transition. It was almost like having a second childhood/teenage years. I even bought some kids’ toys that I felt I would have liked at that age just to have the experience. And I suppose now I’m still kind of catching up in a way. My dress style is like that of a person around 25–30 years old, and I’m almost 50, which is probably another reason why I look so youthful.
Monika: How would you describe your personal style? Do you follow any specific fashion trends, or do you have go-to outfits that make you feel confident?
Fallon: My style I would consider hard femme, and it’s been that way since I started training in MMA back in 2006. I gravitated towards the sporty women’s fighter look, wearing lots of Affliction and Sinful brand clothing when I was fighting. Now I do either a pastel goth style or metal style for the most part. And every once in a while, I will wear a nice sundress when it’s warm.
Monika: By the way, do you like being complimented on your looks? Do you find it easy to accept compliments, or do you struggle with believing them?
Fallon: Oh, I love being complimented on my looks. I really don’t have a hard time believing them because, to be honest, I’ve had so many over the years. I’ve been featured in magazines, I’ve done television, I’ve had tons of interviews with my face in them, and I’ve been in a fashion show. It’s not so hard of a thing to believe compliments about my looks after that, I think.
Monika: Did you ever feel pressure to meet a certain ideal of femininity, like I did by trying to look like the women around me?
Fallon: At first, I did feel like I needed to meet a certain ideal of femininity. But, as I was getting into earlier in this interview, that started to change when I met and started hanging out with cisgender women who did not fit that ideal. The more I felt like I was one of those types of women, the more I felt I didn’t need to fit a certain ideal of femininity.
Monika: What was the most surprising part of your transition, something you never expected, whether good or bad?
Fallon: I suppose it was surprising that my transition went as well as it did physically. I started transition at the age of 25 or 26, and I thought it would be too late for the physical changes to take as well as they ended up taking.
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| Fallon's Facebbok page. |
Monika: How has love shaped your life and your journey as a transgender woman? Could you share what role love plays in your personal growth and happiness?
Fallon: I think the love that I get from my trans community has helped a lot in my personal growth and happiness. The support that I get from trans people helps keep me going. I could probably survive in life without that, but it wouldn’t be as comfortable.
Monika: Many trans women are writing their memoirs these days. Have you ever thought about writing your own book, and if so, what would its central message be?
Fallon: I don’t know. Perhaps one day I will write a book. I’ve already done a documentary. But writing a book takes a lot of time and effort! I’m sure that if I did, there would be a decent audience for it. Who knows, maybe I’ll do that in a couple of years.
Monika: Finally, what’s next for Fallon? What dreams and goals are you working toward now?
Fallon: My goals for now are to just make it through this Trump presidency alive and well here in the United States. Hopefully, we will have a fair election the next go-around, and then we can have a chance at restoring whatever trans rights we will have lost by then. Until that election, I’ll try to keep plugging away at advocacy for trans people.
Monika: Fallon, thank you so much for sharing your journey and insights.
All the photos: courtesy of Fallon Fox.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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